CollarRedux: Six Days of Christmas
by oflymonddreams
Summary: What is Christmas Day like for the slaves in PPTH? Collar!Verse story, pre-infarction, not exactly festive. There are slaves, Greg House is one of them, usual non-con warnings.
1. God rest you merry gentlemen

_A seasonal extra for CollarRedux... a six-part story covering six of Greg House's Christmas Days at PPTH in the Collar!Verse. All six Days take place pre-infarction._

_This is the Collar!Verse. This story takes place some months after the end of "Sixteen Days". There are slaves, Greg House is one of them. Warnings for non-con and crude language._

**Six Days of Christmas**

_1: God rest you merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay_

There was a huge Christmas tree in the lobby, and fake snow on the windows obscuring the real snow outside. The Diagnostics patient had been turned over to cardiology, and the Diagnostics fellow had left in a rush to catch a flight. House went down to the basement early to eat.

None of the slaves spoke to him. He was used to that.

One of the supervisors was circling the canteen tables, drawing either a red or a green mark on the back of the slaves' hands. Most of the slaves got red. Red circle meant the vampires took blood, light duty, but this wasn't a circle, it was just a solid mark on back of hand and palm. None of the slaves showed any surprise or fear: each sat head down as the supervisor marked his hand, and as she moved on, went back to eating their food. The supervisor paused when she got to him. "You're Doctor Cuddy's boy, aren't you?"

"Yes, ma'am," House said. He preferred "You're the Diagnostics slave" but either one was some kind of defense in the basement.

The supervisor looked at the list on her clipboard. "I don't have an assignment for you for tomorrow."

"Doctor Cuddy gave me some work to do," House said. He hadn't seen Cuddy in two days, he'd heard her say to someone else that she was going to her mother's for Christmas, and he had no idea if she'd agree that the journals he hadn't read yet constituted 'work'. But he didn't think anyone was likely to call her to check.

The supervisor uncapped the red marker pen. "Well, there's no room for you in green dorm." She scrawled a red mark on the back of his hand.

House finished his food. Last year he'd celebrated Christmas by getting drunk. He'd showed up to work on December 26 with a hangover and Doctor Shea had threatened to fire him. A week later he'd figured out what was causing a patient's kidney failure and saved her from a second-trimester abortion and probable death and Shea had very publicly forgiven him. In February he'd been let go with excuses about budget cuts, and from then on...

...there was no use thinking about that.

House got up, showing his empty bowl to the kitchen overseer, and climbed the stairs out of the basement. He heard the medical students before he saw them, talking loudly running down the stairs, and reflexively he backed into a corner to let them pass, keeping his head down. One of the students smacked him with the back of his hand, not hard, and didn't stop, didn't even bother to look to see if he reacted. They were in a good mood, laughing, talking cheerfully, he could hear them laughing until they left the stair and the door closed behind them. He walked on up the stairs. There was no use thinking about that either.

A few people had sent Christmas cards at work to the Diagnostics fellow. They stood in a row along one shelf, cheery representations of robins and religion, snowmen and cheery trees.

The balcony was clotted with snow and ice. He could turn all the lights off and it was still bright enough for him to sleep, with the city lights giving the snow an eerie white glow. Today going outside for an hour had been bitterly unpleasant, the balcony wasn't large enough to do more than walk up and down, with his hands tucked into his armpits. Tomorrow he supposed it would be warmer to go to the exercise field, at least there he could run. The clinic was closed tomorrow. There would be no comforting sandwich from Nurse Previn, no time in the day at all when he would be called "Doctor House". He lay still, pressing his face into the pillow, and sleep arrived at last.

When he went down for breakfast at six am on December 25th, he knew there was something wrong from the top of the stair into the basement. There was no smell of cooking food, cleaning materials, even the smell of unwashed slaves seemed diminished. The hall was empty, and the dorms - all but one - were locked.

So was the canteen. House pushed at the door, as if wishing would make it open, knowing with awful certainty that something was wrong, not knowing what.

One of the guards came unhurriedly out of the security station. "You. Boy. Get down on your knees. What are you doing here?"

"Sir," House said. He dropped to his knees. The guard didn't sound angry, he sounded cheerful. Happy. House dropped his eyes. "Sir, this slave wasn't..." he trailed off. He literally wasn't sure what to say that didn't sound like a criticism or a complaint. "This slave has work to do for Doctor Cuddy, today, sir..."

The guard took hold of his arm, not roughly, and turned his hand up towards the light. "You're the slave that stays upstairs, aren't you, boy? The expensive one?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay. Guess no one thought to sort you into a dorm for today." He still didn't sound angry. House relaxed fractionally. The guard tugged at his wrist. "Come on, boy."

There were three guards on duty in the security station. There was tinsel and balloons, holiday cards and plastic holly: the room felt bright and cheerful, and there was food - a basket of fruit, a plate of mince pies and cookies, a platter of sweet rolls, steaming mugs of coffee.

There were security cameras in the dorms. The screen at the workstation was showing constantly shifting images, three seconds at a time, of each dorm.

"What the hell's this?" The other guards didn't sound angry. One of them was keeping an eye on the shifting screens. The dorms looked crowded - none of the slaves were doing anything. They sat or lay still.

"Diagnostics slave," the guard said. "Doctor Cuddy's boy. He sleeps upstairs, remember? He got tagged red, but I guess no one thought to get him into one of the red dorms for today."

"They're all pretty full," the third guard said. He hadn't taken his eyes off the screens. "We can put him in four dorm for the night." His tone of voice had changed. He sounded greedy. "Til then, let's keep him here."

"Sir," House said. "I have work to do for Doctor Cuddy, sir."

The second guard got to his feet and took hold of his hand and waggled it, grinning at House. "Pretty sure you don't, boy."

"You won't get into trouble," the guard who'd collected him said. "That's what the red mark's for. Don't worry about it, boy." He ran a hand down House's back. He might have meant to be soothing. House swallowed.

"Sir, this slave does have work to do for Doctor Cuddy. This slave is sorry. This slave..." His voice trailed off as the other guard put a hand on his belly and rubbed him.

"No need to get into a panic, boy. It's Christmas."

"No one's got any work for you to do, boy," the first guard said.

"Hey," the third guard said. He hadn't moved. "You two aren't going to get all the fun. Time."

They were evidently taking turns to keep a close eye on the dorm cameras. The third guard was tall, and smiling with anticipation. "What have we got to grease him up?" He went round behind House and began pulling down his jeans.

House froze. His hands clutched at his jeans. No one had fucked his ass since - the guard who'd disappeared, the obscene intern - they had used jelly from doughnuts, stuffed his anus with food -

He'd had his mouth fucked. He could deal with that. He didn't think he could deal with this.

"No," he said. He thought he'd said it. His mouth was locked up. He was afraid of what they'd do if he said it. The guard was yanking at his jeans, hitting his hands to make him move them.

"Please," he got out. "Please, sir, this slave..." His voice was small and terrified.

"No need to panic, boy," the guard who was rubbing his belly said, gently, not angrily. "Hey, Jim, quit it for a minute. Boy, we're not going to hurt you." He went on rubbing House's belly and chest, long palm strokes like soothing an animal. "Want some food? Hey, we got food right here. We're going to have a party. It's Christmas Day. Food sound good, boy?"

_No._

"I want to fuck him," the third guard said.

"Jim, you're not going to fuck him right here," the first guard said. "It's not sanitary."

"When did you get religion?"

"Shut the fuck up. We can party right here with the slave, everybody gets a blow-job, everybody's happy, but I don't want to smell the slave's crap all day long."

The third guard - Jim - stopped tugging at his jeans. "Okay." He sounded sulky. "I want a blow-job."

The other two guards laughed. The guard who'd been rubbing House's belly stopped, and turned House, pushing him down on his knees. "Okay boy, open wide. Jim, you horny motherfucker, you better not wear him out."

The cock shoved into his mouth was fat and white and none too clean. The guard grabbed hold of his head and jerked his mouth back and forward, fucking his face. He came quick, thin bitter-tasting fluid. House swallowed, choked, swallowed.

They all wanted blow-jobs. They took turns. One of them always watched the camera screens. They put a paper plate down on the floor for him and put food on it for him. He paid attention.

Most of the slaves PPTH owned spent the 25th day of December locked in the dorms. They were issued a double ration of slave chow and, as House knew from his first two weeks, each of the dorms had a water tap and a latrine: most of the basement staff could get the day off. There was one dorm left open for slaves who were needed to work, but they spent the day upstairs, from four in the morning til six at night: the groomer didn't work that day and the kitchens were closed down till the 26th, so the slaves who worked were just sent upstairs with a bag of slave chow to eat when their supervisor gave them a break.

All the other slaves could be supervised through the security cameras from the guards' station. The three guards on duty had drawn the short straw, though none of them seemed to mind. They were having a party.

"Let's fuck him before we put him in the dorm," Jim proposed. He gave House's buttocks a hard slap. The guard who'd found him, Larry, was watching the dorms on screen then, but he looked round.

"Eyes," the third guard said, to Larry. He was Nick. "Jim, quit it, he's being a good boy. What about it, boy?" He put half a sandwich down on the paper plate and tousled House's hair. "You want a good fucking from the three of us? You'd like that, wouldn't you, boy?"

None of the three guards left the security station for more than five minutes, and only one at a time. There must be supposed to be two there all the time and three except for toilet breaks. They were working a long shift. They'd started before six, probably at four in the morning. They would have to quit about four in the afternoon. They weren't supposed to be using a hospital slave for sex during work hours.

House ate the food. He tried not to flinch away from the heavy, almost affectionate handling. He swallowed when they came. He didn't say anything.

And when finally he saw a moment - when Jim was on a toilet break, and Nick was sitting watching the screen, and Larry was standing by the coffeemaker pouring himself a fresh cup - he moved.

Out of the door. He had planned this, every step, knowing if he didn't think it through he would flinch, drop to his knees, obey. Larry yelled and House made his feet keep moving: he _knew_ they couldn't leave the station, there had to be two of them there, Jim was in the washroom. They had guns but they didn't dare shoot him, they had taser batons but they had to catch him first -

He ran. Up the stairs. He had to get to his office. He _had_ to.

The Diagnostics office had a standard listing of all internal hospital numbers. House never used it. He had his fellow make all phone calls. No one wanted a slave using the phone. House fell to his knees beside the desk he used, reaching for the phone, scrabbling for the list of numbers. He could do this. He could. He had to do it fast before the three of them involved someone else, before they reported he'd run away -

"Security, basement," Nick answered the phone. "We got a situation here - "

House swallowed. "This is Diagnostics," he said. He guessed Nick would recognize his voice, and from the swearing, Nick did. He grinned, feeling better. "This is the _expensive_ Diagnostics slave in the Diagnostics office. Where this slave has work to do for Doctor Cuddy. This slave will work in the Diagnostics office today." He paused. "Is that clear, sir?"

Nick explained the situation to Jim and Larry. House pressed the phone to his ear and listened. Nick sounded loud and angry, and he wasn't explaining it the way House just had, but it was clear he'd got the gist. House was feeling better by the minute.

"You better not leave that office, boy," Nick said.

"Thank you, sir," House said. He was still grinning, and it was probably audible in his voice. He put the phone down. His belly felt rough from the too-rich food and the come he'd swallowed, and he wasn't going to get anything else to eat till six tomorrow.

But he'd take whatever Christmas treat he could get. And the thought of the three frustrated stooges in the basement, not able to leave it til the end of their shift, not able to do anything to him in Diagnostics by Doctor Cuddy's order...

That was the best present he was likely to get all year.

_tba_

_Happy holidays_!_ Continued soon!_


	2. In the bleak midwinter

_A seasonal extra for CollarRedux... part two of a six-part story covering six of Greg House's Christmas Days at PPTH in the Collar!Verse. All six Days take place pre-infarction._

__This is the Collar!Verse. This story takes place on the second Christmas after Greg has been enslaved. There are slaves, Greg House is one of them._  
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**_2: In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan_**

There was a huge Christmas tree in the foyer of the hospital, and a plastic nativity scene nested underneath, sentimental enough to make Doctor Shepard yawn. Fake snow crusted around the fake ass and fake cow and drizzled over the fake stable with pre-modelled figures of definitely-not-Jewish-looking Mary, Joseph, and baby.

Elaine Shepard had been the Diagnostics fellow for nine months. She had got used to how the other doctors treated her with veiled contempt or pity for being supervised by a slave, and how she was excluded from the gossip networks - the only party she'd been asked to this year was the big party for donors and senior staff and a few handpicked juniors, which was an honor to be chosen for but which wasn't much fun. (Doctor Cuddy had admitted to her in a frank five-minute talk before the party that she was there because many of the donors wanted to meet Doctor House, which obviously they couldn't, so Cuddy intended to introduce them to the Diagnostics fellow instead.)

Her mother's present to her for this Christmas had been a flight home. Shepard wouldn't have thought of it, ordinarily, when it would take up hours of the worst travel time on Christmas Eve and hours again to get back, just to have Christmas Day with her family. They weren't a sentimental family and Mom's letter with the tickets had been mainly explaining how she'd been arranging things at home so that everyone would fit in, and what size of turkey she had bought, and how Elaine's oldest nephew Carl was a vegetarian this year and Mark wanted to be a girl so would Elaine remember to call him Mary, and the weather had been so cold this year, heating bills were terrible.

Christina Bowe, their patient, was still undiagnosed. She was a foster kid, and her foster parents had visited her twice so far: they told her they'd be too busy to come in on the 24th and 25th, but they'd see her on the 26th, unless of course the hospital disharged her.

Fourteen, in hospital, over Christmas. Shephard looked at her watch. If she'd been able to catch her flight, she would be home right now, in warm California, in the early evening, drinking cheap red wine with her parents and eating Dad's Christmas eve chilli special and wrapping presents. she wasn't sorry for herself, she was angry. Doctor House had spent the day staring at test results or sending Shephard off to do more tests. He hadn't said a human word to her all day till half an hour ago when he'd told her to go get a sandwich for herself, but even then he'd ordered her to bring it back to Diagnostics. He sometimes referred to himself as diagnostic equipment, grinning as if he thought that was a joke, but he was _behaving_ as if he were diagnostic equipment. He was supposed to be her teacher, and to her surprise he was a pretty good teacher - he might be sarcastic if she didn't grasp something as fast as he thought she should, but he explained what he was doing, what his thought processes were, and she thought she was beginning to grasp the principles behind his system of diagnosis.

Not for the past few days. Christina had come into the free clinic with a friend who was sixteen and worried about a rash: Doctor House had - Christina told Doctor Shepard - turned the friend out with a comment about carpet burn and insisted on admitting Christina. She had bad nails and the varnish kept chipping off; leukoplakia on the inside of her mouth, which she hadn't noticed: and very poor skin. Her hair was dyed in a rainbow flash of colour, but the texture under the dye wasn't good, though that might be because she was constantly, she told Shepard, having it stripped and trying out new colours.

Doctor House hadn't moved since Shepard went downstairs an hour ago. He fired off a series of questions to her about the tests she had set up while she was unwrapping her sandwich. She'd got them all.

"I think it's genetic," she added, as she'd said several times before. "We don't have any family history for her, I think we should run a full scan for genetic disorders." Doctor House had got her to search the foster home on December 23rd, so thoroughly that Shepard had been embarrassed: she'd found nothing. It was bleak and clean. They had six foster children, including Christina, and got regular inspections from the authorities.

"No," Doctor House said flatly. He got up to take a closer look at the scan of Christina's hands, as he had done several times before. As he passed, he picked up her sandwich and bit into it. Shepard stared, speechless. He stuffed half of it into his mouth while he was peering at Christina's fingers on the scan, and he turned, still munching, and eyed her. "Did you want some?" he said, and lifted his chin.

The heavy metal collar around his throat was something Shepard had been unable to look away from, in the early days, but she'd got used to it. He didn't act like a slave, he didn't do slave work, he wasn't obedient or submissive or quiet or respectful.

_Stealing her food_ was beyond a joke. Shepard was furious. She had been working hard all day, she hadn't had time to go home for a proper meal since yesterday morning, she was missing her Christmas at home for this, and it was all very well for "Doctor House" - he got free meals in the slave canteen in the basement.

Doctor House stood looking at her, and he went on eating her sandwich. He was too big for her to just take it back, she wasn't allowed to treat him like a slave, she could report him to Doctor Cuddy - Cuddy had told her that if he overstepped the bounds, that was her recourse - but what would she say - "He stole my food!"

Doctor House swallowed the last of her sandwich, went back to his desk, picking up her paper napkin on the way by to wipe his fingers. "You can go home now," he told her flatly. "Don't be late tomorrow."

Christmas morning was cold and sleety. The worst of it was, though Shepard appreciated it was tough for Christina, the girl was stable. She had a bone marrow deficiency, yesterday's tests had established. Doctor House had whiteboarded the symptoms, but he didn't have much to say about them. He sat there firing off questions to Shepard, sending her down the hall to Christina to get the answers. They could have done all of this on December 26th just as easily. The oncology ward staff were making an effort to include Christina in the hospital Christmas Day. In a way it might have been easier for her _not_ to have her doctor appearing at irregular intervals to ask her questions about her personal life or her symptoms. Which made increasingly less and less sense as the day went on. Why did it matter if she had ever been a cheerleader? They already knew she had a bad diet.

"She has bone marrow failure," Shepard said. "We should get her on epogen and neupogen and look for a bone marrow donor. And I think we should run genetic tests."

Doctor House looked at the clock. He had been doing that all day. It was after six. Her parents had said last night they'd make a family call to her in the evening.

"Okay," he said finally. "Start her on the medication. Run the test for DKC1."

"What?" Shepard stared.

"She has dyskeratosis congenita," Doctor House said. "Everything points to it. Bad skin, weak and distorted fingernails, white patches on the inside of her mouth, bone marrow failure. Have those checked in case they're precancerous. And you said she was retarded. Mild to moderate learning difficulties, another symptom."

"I did not!"

"You were polite," Doctor House said. He looked at the clock again and grinned, showing all of his teeth. "And get yourself a sandwich."

Shepard took a deep breath. "I will set up the genetic test so we have the results tomorrow," she said. "I will be in early tomorrow to get the rest done. I'll go wish our patient a happy Christmas and then I'll go home." _Asshole._

Doctor House paused, looking directly at her. Finally he said, without snapping, "Showing some backbone. Good for you. Go home. I'll do a biopsy and get the test set up."

"I'll do the biopsy - "

Doctor House was already pulling on a rolltop. He wore those when he had to see patients - they covered his collar. "Go home," he said, his voice dry. He shrugged on his labcoat. He didn't wear that except for clinic work. "Do you have to be told twice?"

"You've already done the test," Shepard realized. "You're not going to do the biopsy. You're going to tell Christina her diagnosis." She knew it, even before she went to his desk and uncovered the report from the lab that had been sitting on his desk since the morning of December 24th.

"You knew!" She turned round to shout at him. He'd made her miss her flight, he'd made her stay over on Christmas Day, for no other reason but being an asshole. When she turned, he was gone.

_tba_


	3. I'll be home for Christmas

_A seasonal extra for CollarRedux... part three of a six-part story covering six of Greg House's Christmas Days at PPTH in the Collar!Verse. All six Days take place pre-infarction._

__This is the Collar!Verse. This story takes place just after the third Christmas after Greg has been enslaved. There are slaves, Greg House is one of them.__

**3: I'll be home for Christmas, You can count on me**

Stacy Warner booked an appointment to see Doctor Cuddy on December 27th. She didn't tell House she had made the appointment, though she supposed she would have to tell him afterwards.

"What did you want to talk to me about?" Doctor Cuddy asked.

"I don't want to take up much of your time," Stacy said politely, "I know you're very busy right now. Congratulations on your appointment."

Doctor Cuddy outright grinned. The smile transformed her face: she looked much younger. "Thank you," she said, still grinning, and then with no visible effort her face became serious again, poised, composed. She would become the Chief Administrator of the hospital in five days time, and almost certainly the Dean of Medicine at the next meeting of the department heads.

"It's about House," Stacy said.

Cuddy picked up a pen and began tapping the desk. "The Diagnostics slave," she said. "What about him?"

Buying House had turned PPTH from an obscure teaching hospital attached to a small New Jersey university into an institution that was beginning to be nationally and even internationally known. Without false modesty, Stacy Warner knew that she wouldn't have considered working for PPTH's legal department two or three years ago. For Cuddy to refer to the subject of the purchasing decision that was about to make her one of the youngest hospital chief administrators on the east coast, as "the Diagnostics slave", as if he were a minor problem...

Stacy kept her courtroom face on. "You're aware, I'm sure, that I've been removing Doctor House from the hospital for evenings quite frequently."

Doctor Cuddy hesitated. She also looked as if she had a courtroom face on. "Yes," she said at last. "Derek Talbot reports all potential security problems with regard to the DIagnostics slave to me."

"I wasnt't aware that this had been causing problems," Stacy said blandly. She was aware it had been causing hospital-wide, snickering gossip, which she was ignoring as the fastest way to make it go away. "I had intended to ask permission to take Doctor House out of the hospital over December 25th, as the clinic is closed that day, providing he didn't have a Diagnostics patient, which, in the end, he didn't."

Cuddy nodded. She didn't say anything.

"In the end, due to a family emergency - " Stacy paused. Her mother was dying. She hadn't said so - but she'd wanted the whole family home for Christmas. Stacy had wrestled with it - she didn't get on with her mother all that well - but she was glad she'd gone. Unsentimentally, factually, her mother had let her know that unless there was a remission (which there might be, her mother said, I'm not giving up hope) she would probably be dead by next September. And she had given Stacy the little cross that her mother had given _her_, and told her how proud she was of how much Stacy had accomplished.

"A family emergency," Stacy said. "I had to go out of state for Christmas. So obviously Doctor House couldn't travel with me."

"Well?" Doctor Cuddy said. She glanced, perhaps unconsciously, at her watch. "If you were to tag him, I'm afraid that couldn't change."

"I hadn't thought of tagging him," Stacy said. "That wasn't - "

"You hadn't?" Cuddy looked suddenly surprised, breaking her composure.

Several rude people had outright asked Stacy when she planned to tag the slave she was "using", and Stacy had given them the kind of set-down that seemed appropriate. Doctor House was not an animal, a pet, to be "tagged".

"That wasn't what I wanted to ask you about," Stacy said. "I discovered when I came back that Doctor House hadn't had anything to eat for exactly 48 hours over Christmas Day - his last meal was on the morning of December 24th, he didn't eat till December 26th."

"What?" A third crack in Doctor Cuddy's composure.

Stacy studied her like a prosecuting lawyer in a courtroom. This actually made her like Cuddy better: the look on Cuddy's face was confusion and annoyance.

"Almost all the slaves in the hospital, except those specifically given an assignment by their supervisor, are locked in the dorms in the basement after the end of their shift on December 24th till their first shift on December 26th. This ensures almost all of the staff who work in the basement can have the day off."

"Yes?" Cuddy asked.

"You have never given Doctor House an assignment for Christmas Day. To avoid being locked in a dorm for over 24 hours - which I'm sure you'd agree, would be a waste of his time - he does not attend the evening meal on December 24th, and gets no food on December 25th." Stacy kept her voice very level. "I'm sure this is an oversight on your part."

"I had no idea," Cuddy said, still looking a little discomposed. She reached for next year's desk diary, flipped it open to December, wrote something on the page, a few words. "Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I'll write a memo to Mrs Foster for next year." She closed the desk diary. She was looking at Stacy in an odd way.

"You _weren't_ planning to tag him? This is some kind of temporary... thing?"

They stared at each other. Any woman who had risen as far and as fast as Doctor Cuddy had, Stacy knew, had to have a driving ambition, a ruthless attention to detail, and either a matchlessly supportive partner or no personal life at all. Stacy had counted herself as someone with no time for a personal life, until she met House.

And, looked at from the outside - as she could see Cuddy looking at her now - tagging a male slave owned by her workplace was in some ways the ideal solution for the busy career woman. If her life was an article by _Cosmopolitan_.

_It's not like that,_ she thought of saying to Cuddy. He's funny, smart, thoughtful, aggravating, sarcastic... I'd want to go out with him if he weren't a slave, I wish he wasn't - He fights so hard to be taken seriously as a doctor, to advocate for his patients - I don't want to tag him because he's not some kind of pet, he's _House_.

Stacy got up, ignoring the question. "Thank you very much," she said politely. "And thank you for letting me take up your time."

She'd tell House all about it later, next time they could go home.

**_tba_**

_If you're enjoying thise, please leave a review - I can't tell if the people visiting are looking at it and running away again... Christmas with slaves, holly and collars, fake snow and manacles... maybe kind of inappropriate but... _

_I doubt if there'll be an update tomorrow - but I hope there'll be another one on the day after._


	4. It's beginning to look a lot like

_A seasonal extra for CollarRedux... part four of a six-part story covering six of Greg House's Christmas Days at PPTH in the Collar!Verse. All six Days take place pre-infarction._

__This is the Collar!Verse. This story takes place on the fourth Christmas Eve after Greg has been enslaved. There are slaves, Greg House is one of them.__

**4: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Ev'rywhere you go;**

Stacy's mother had died on September 22nd. She went to visit with her oldest brother Joseph at Thanksgiving, and was issued invitations to have Christmas with them by all three of their sister-in-laws. She didn't say why when she said no to all of them.

In past years, whenever she'd been able to escape family Christmas, she'd spent December 25th entirely on her own - an entire day when the phone didn't ring (except for her brothers making wife-inspired calls, "Call your sister and wish her merry Christmas, poor thing, she's all on her own) and no one expected any work from her.

This year was the first year the absence of a phone call from her mother on Christmas Day wouldn't mean an angry call from her a day or two later, right when she'd had time to wind herself up about Stacy being unsociable and unfeminine and _not getting married_. All of her life it had felt like there was nothing Stacy could do that would have pleased her mother more than to get married. She touched her cross, a habit that had grown on her in less than a year, reminding herself: she _was_ proud of me, even if she waited till she was dying to say so.

This year was the first year Stacy had ever _planned_ a Christmas - the first year since she was a child that she'd spent days trying to work out what present she could give. (Her brothers got bottles of whiskey, her sister-in-laws got perfume, her nephews and nieces got Toys R Us gift cards, female work colleagues got flowers, male work colleagues got wine, alcoholics got chocolates. Stacy could do her Christmas shopping in one morning and treat herself to lunch, thoroughly pleased with her efficiency.)

She'd sent flowers to Doctor Cuddy this year, yellow roses - Cuddy had been surprisingly reasonable about letting Stacy take House out of the hospital, from when the clinic closed on Christmas Eve till when it re-opened on December 26th, assuming no Diagnostics patient appeared.

She'd spent days thinking over what she could give to House.

He wasn't supposed to own anything. She could get him some designer clothing, but the only occasion he would have to wear it would be either in her apartment or on the rare occasions she got permission from Cuddy to take him to eat out.

Christmas Eve the clinic overran the scheduled closing time by thirty-five minutes, and House was kept for half an hour after that to help clear things up: Brenda Previn called her office to wish her a merry Christmas and tell her that Greg was on his way up. She didn't sound sarcastic or apologetic, and Stacy, though she had built up quite a head of steam, wished her a merry Christmas with considerable self-control and made a mental note to add her to the Christmas flower list for next year.

House looked exhausted. He'd had a patient in Diagnostics till December 23rd, and Stacy knew that Previn had then claimed him for the clinic to make up the hours missed - so he'd worked the rest of yesterday and all day today. Stacy knew better than to comment on it. She drove him home in silence.

They'd been seeing each other for about eighteen months. Not quite a year ago, Stacy had bought a tag and they'd discussed and agreed on putting it on the collar. House seemed to have got relaxed enough about acting normal at home, not asking her permission to do things: and Stacy had relaxed enough that she could just ask him normally to get stuff done, help with the dishes, clean up a spill, change a light bulb, without feeling that she was ordering him about.

This evening House stood in the hall, decorated by one of the florist's slaves with holly and tinsel, as still as if this were a year and a half ago and he was waiting for her permission to move. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, and when she took a step towards the living-room, he followed.

The florist did a sideline in Christmas trees and a tree-decorating service: the slaves had put it up and ornamented it in less than an hour. Stacy had never had a tree in her living-room before and had always thought that tradition a bit stupid. Silver icicles and multicolored chains of gold and silver ornaments; a dozen gold glass orbs: a string of silver stars culminating in one at the very top of the tree. It blocked access to the stereo, but she didn't use it much. House's present was underneath the tree, along with three parcels from her sister-in-laws that were supposed to be from her brothers. It wasn't a big tree, but it loomed large in Stacy's neat living-room.

House stood there and looked at the tree. He didn't smile. "Are you having a party?" he asked finally, in a small voice.

"No," Stacy said.

"Do you always do this?" House asked. He turned and looked at her.

"No," Stacy admitted. "I don't usually do anything. It's just a day off."

House stood still, staring at her. "You thought I'd like this," he said, after a moment.

"It's not important," Stacy snapped, exasperated with herself and with House for making a big deal of it. "Just ignore it. What do you usually do - " She broke off. By unspoken mutual consent, she'd never asked House what his life had been like before he was a slave, and he'd never told her.

"Usually? I used to get drunk," House said. He grinned at her, not pleasantly. "You're not allowed to get me drunk, are you?"

All three of Stacy's brothers and her Dad when he was alive spent Christmas Day getting steadily drunker. Stacy opened her mouth to sting.

"You really hate this," she realized out loud. She looked around the room. The tree, the tinsel, the ornaments. The cards directed to Stacy Warner, that would continue to be directed to just her no matter how long she and House went on seeing each other. "Let's clear it up."

"What?"

"Clear it up. Throw it out." Stacy gestured, taking it all in, the tree and all the Christmas twinkle. "Then let's eat."

It took House twenty minutes to take it all down. They both took the tree down to the garbage bins - Stacy wondered briefly what her neighbors were going to think, a Christmas tree in the garbage on Christmas Eve.

Upstairs, her apartment looked like it usually did, and House, as he usually did, sat down on the couch: then glanced over at her stereo. He got up, but not to help Stacy get the food on the table: he seemed to be messing around with the radio controls. He found a broadcast from Chicago and that seemed to satisfy him.

"Turn it off," Stacy told him. Dinner tonight had just been reheated in the oven, but it smelled good and she was hungry.

House turned the sound up, instead, and sat down at the table. The radio announcer's voice was talking about the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Bach Christmas Oratorio. "Wait," House said, as Stacy got up to turn it off, and she glanced at him.

"Best part of Christmas," House said. He wasn't smiling, but his eyes were fixed on hers.

Music beat into the room: a melody of strings, drums, and flutes. Stacy listened. After a minute, the chorus began. Stacy turned the sound up again, and sat down. The music filled the room.

"Merry Christmas."

_tba_


	5. Come, they told me

_A seasonal extra for CollarRedux... part five of a six-part story covering six of Greg House's Christmas Days at PPTH in the Collar!Verse. All six Days take place pre-infarction._

__This is the Collar!Verse. This story takes place on the seventh Christmas after Greg has been enslaved. There are slaves, Greg House is one of them.__

**5: Come, they told me, the newborn king to see**

Dani rang the doorbell a second time, and shoogled Johnny in her arms. "She does know we're visiting?" she asked.

"Of course," Martin said, but his eyes flickered. "Anyway, she's home, she never does anything on Christmas Day."

The door opened. From the look on Stacy's face, Martin had lied: Stacy wasn't expecting them. He bounded forward, wrapped her up in a bear hug that all but picked her off her feet, and shouted jovially "Merry Christmas!"

Dani sighed. But she really had to get in, sit down, and feed Johnny. When Martin unwrapped Stacy from the hug, she held out her hand to Stacy and got an air kiss: she muttered "Sorry," in her ear, and then, more loudly, "Merry Christmas. Guess you didn't get Martin's messages."

"No, I didn't," Stacy said. She gave Martin a cool look. "Where did you message me?"

"I called you at work," Martin said. "We're on our way to see Dani's mom and dad, and we figured since you haven't met Johnny yet, we'd visit while we were in New Jersey."

"Oh," Stacy said. She smiled, very nicely, but the kind of smile that had always made Dani remember how much smarter and richer Stacy was than the rest of her family. Dani appreciated the regular gifts of her favorite perfume, and Stacy always sent polite thank you notes for the gifts Dani bought her, but she'd never really warmed to Stacy.

"We brought you a Christmas basket," Martin said heartily. They had bought some great New York bagels, and a good country-cured ham from home, and a nice bottle of wine. He glanced at Dani.

"We thought we'd come in and visit for a while," Dani said. She was annoyed with Martin herself - he should have taken more care to make sure his sister got the message, if he was going to make a point of how they had to drop by. But by this time, Stacy should have asked them both to step in.

"I have a friend over," Stacy said after a moment. She hesitated a moment before 'friend', and Martin picked up on it.

"Boyfriend? This is great." He moved forward, tugging Dani with him.

There was music playing. Not Christmas songs, it sounded foreign. There were no Christmas decorations, not even Christmas cards. In the living room, standing behind the sofa, looking awkward and surprised, a tall man with blue eyes. He was wearing blue jeans and a plain roll-top jersey. Stacy went to the stereo and glanced at him before she switched it off.

"That was pretty," Dani said. "What was it?"

"The Philadelphia Orchestra. La boheme," the man said. He fidgeted with his hands, looking at Stacy.

Martin stepped forward, holding out his hand. "Hi, I'm Martin - "

There was a moment when the man seemed not sure if he should shake Martin's hand or not, but then he did, still looking confused. He shook Dani's hand too, looking at Johnny.

"Sorry," Dani said, sitting down with huge relief. "Johnny's been letting me know he wants a meal." She had this down to a fine art by now, undoing her nursing bra under her top and letting Johnny latch on before loosely covering them both with her shawl.

"So how long have you and my sister been seeing each other?" Martin asked.

The man looked at Stacy, who said "Four years. Coffee?"

"I'd love a coke if you've got one," Dani said. "I can't drink coffee while I'm nursing, gives me heartburn."

"Four years?" Martin was dumbfounded. He exploded again "_Four years?_" He turned to the man. "What's your name again?"

"Greg," the man said, just as Stacy said "House."

"And you're her secret boy toy?" Martin said jovially, but he wasn't really amused. Dani didn't like him when he got like this. Not that she could blame him exactly for being surprised by this, his only sister, not letting on she was going out with someone, because she'd been told when she and Martin got married a couple of years ago that Stacy was single - they'd sent an invite and Martin had made it "plus one" but Stacy had shown up alone. "Four years, and you didn't come to our wedding?"

"I was working," Greg said. He sat down next to Dani on the couch. "When did you and Martin get married?"

"February last year," Dani said. Martin's first wife had divorced _him_, well over a year before she and Martin got married, and the rest of Martin's family had seemed to be just fine with her. Stacy worked in a hospital. Somehow Greg didn't look like a lawyer. "Are you a doctor?"

"Yes," he said, though he didn't add his field of expertise, something Dani thought all doctors did. "How long has coffee been giving you heartburn?"

"Since I had him," Dani said, meaning Johnny. She eyed Martin, who was off in the kitchen area unpacking the Christmas basket. He didn't like her talking about her symptoms. "Actually since about two weeks after I started breastfeeding. And I get gut cramps sometimes, and bloating like you would not believe."

"Bet I would," Greg said. "He's about eight months old, isn't he?"

"Sure, to the day," Dani said, impressed. "Are you a paediatrician?" Politely, she didn't ask if he had children of his own.

"No," Greg said. "Can he crawl yet?"

"Kind of. He doesn't move forward very well," Dani said. She glanced round. Stacy's apartment was lovely, but not exactly child friendly. And there was the bewildering absence of any Christmas decoration. She looked down at the rug. Johnny was still feeding. She'd need to take him to change, and she wanted to visit the bathroom. The really embarrassing thing was how her bladder really hadn't ever recovered from being pregnant: she needed to pee a lot.

She excused herself when Johnny finally stopped feeding. She and Stacy's friend were having a nice chat, and Martin and Stacy seemed to be having a good visit. She picked up the diaper pack, and visited the bathroom. Oddly there were hardly any signs of male occupation. An extra toothbrush, really, that was all.

When she came back, the atmosphere felt strange. Martin was glaring at Stacy, and Stacy was sitting on the couch beside Greg. Martin got up as soon as she came in. "Come on, let's go."

Greg was sitting still with his hands locked together in front of him, looking down at the floor. They'd had a nice chat, but he struck Dani as the shy type. She supposed Martin and Stacy had had a fight, and that was embarrassing for him.

"Goodbye," Dani said politely to Stacy, and to Greg, who looked up abruptly.

"Ma'am," he said. "Ask your doctor - do a CA125 blood test and a transvaginal ultrasound scan."

"What?" Dani was surprised: it was surreal.

"_What?_" Martin snapped. He sounded really angry.

Stacy looked startled. "What - House?"

"I think you have ovarian cancer," Greg said.

Martin took a step towards him, pointing an angry hand. "Shut the fuck up," he said loudly, and caught Dani's arm. "We're going." He didn't pull at her arm, but Dani was horrified at the scene, and with one very apologetic look at Stacy, she went with Martin.

"What on _earth_ did you think you were doing?" she demanded. "Are you drunk? You have to drive!"

"I'm sober," Martin told her, and breathed in her face to prove it.

"What were you doing, talking to her friend like that!" Dani snapped. "He's a doctor, he works at the hospital like she does - "

"He's not a doctor. And he's not her 'friend.'" Martin got into the car. His hands were gripping the wheel. "Didn't you wonder why we haven't heard anything about this 'friend' in four years? He's a slave. That's a _collar_ he was wearing - didn't you see it? He _belongs_ to the hospital."

"Oh my God." Dani was dumbstruck. "She's - she's _using_ the slave?"

"Don't!" Martin snapped. "This is my _sister_. How do you think _I_ feel about it? She asked me not to tell anyone. As if."

_tba_

_Thanks for the comments! FFnet seems to have gone into bizarro world for a while - I can see the comments in email but not on the site.  
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	6. Oh, you better watch out

_Decided to start writing this before Christmas to get myself into the "Christmas spirit" but have enjoyed putting this together - there should be more about Greg and Stacy! New Collarverse writer Ravenhurst started writing a story about the Greg and Stacy years, "No Escape", which is in the Collarverse Community - and if you don't follow that, please do already! Longtime stalker/writing-partner Tailkinker wrote a lovely fluffy Christmas story with a really happy ending, "A Christmas In the Mirror". So it's been great. Maybe we'll party again next year. There are the Christmases after the infarction to get through..._

_In response to one review to the last chapter - actually my thought was that Dani probably_ doesn't_ have ovarian cancer, House is diagnosing because he really doesn't have any other way to cope with the situation. (House does not have a 100% success rate of correctly insta-diagnosing patients. Not in my universe anyway.)_

_This is a seasonal extra for CollarRedux... part six of a six-part story covering six of Greg House's Christmas Days at PPTH in the Collar!Verse. All six Days take place pre-infarction._

_This is the Collar!Verse. This story takes place on the eighth Christmas of House's enslavement. There are slaves, Greg House is one of them. Warnings for non-con and crude language._

**6. Oh You better watch out, You better not cry, You better not pout, I'm telling you why**

The last patient of December 24th, a man with a head-cold who ought to have just stayed home with Kleenex, hot drinks, and aspirin, instead of coming out to infect more people, got dealt with before six. House told him nastily that there was no cure, waited for the man's face to go white with shock, and then explained in sarcastic detail exactly how to treat a cold. He was unpleasantly amused to see fear-shock turn to anger: this was at least the fourth patient who had stumbled in to the exam room listless and choked with a cold, who had walked out briskly and furiously, all set to give someone a piece of their mind about the rude doctor in exam room one.

There was no one else in the waiting area. The doors had been closed against new admissions for forty minutes. Tomorrow was Christmas Day and the clinic was closed: there was a bowl of candy canes instead of lollipops on the admissions counter, and all the staff, including Nurse Previn, had been wearing red Santa hats. Previn pulled hers off as House walked over to the admissions area, handing the last file back to her. There would be half an hour or so of clear-up to do; Previn was probably going to scold him for rudeness to the patients, which would probably mean a trip to the basement either before or after. It had been worth it, House told himself. He lifted his chin and stared at Previn.

"I had six complaints about your behavior today," Nurse Previn said. She stood up, eyeing him. After a moment, she added "I apologized on your behalf, and I'm not going to have you disciplined for this. Not today. You've got the day off tomorrow. If I get any complaints about you next week, you're going direct to the basement, is that clear?"

Clear. The tag that Stacy had hung from his collar wasn't there, hadn't been there for weeks, and Stacy herself was gone from the hospital: her leaving party had been yesterday. Of course the slave she used to have tagged hadn't been invited.

House spread his lips and showed his teeth. "Clear," he said. His voice came out harsh. "Happy holidays." He hadn't been dismissed but he turned around and walked out of the clinic anyway.

Years ago Jon had told him that no one tags a slave forever. He had been stupid about Stacy. As stupid as getting enslaved. Stacy couldn't afford to buy him, and even if she did, it wasn't legal to buy a slave in order to free him. Slaves did get freed, sometimes, but House had no reason to suppose PPTH would ever let go of him. He was an expensive asset. Valuable hospital equipment. No one would give that away. No one would want a relationship with an MRI machine for long.

House stopped at the head of the stairs down to the basement. There were other slaves going past him, walking tiredly, end of shift: they looked at him with curiosity, crazy Greg who had been tagged for years, who wasn't tagged any more. For years House had been able to face off the most aggressive staff at PPTH, knowing there was really nothing they could do to him, providing he kept up his work for the clinic and the Diagnostics department: he was protected by Brenda Previn and Doctor Cuddy in the clinic and the Diagnostics department, and by his relationship to Stacy Warner everywhere else.

The basement smelled of cleaning fluids and unwashed slaves and hot food.

The evening meal was sliced vegetables baked into a kind of loaf with lentils and bits of meat and cheese. Every slave got an apple and an orange: House wondered if this was some gesture at celebration. He'd got used to eating like the real people ate. Or they just wanted to use up the fresh fruit, as no one would be around tomorrow to eat it.

Scott, one of the junior supervisors, was moving through the room with a pair of permanent markers. House saw her and remembered what she was probably doing before she got to him: she glanced down at her list, picked up his hand, and scrawled on it with the green marker.

House sat staring down at the food in his bowl. His hand lay flat on the table beside it. Last year at about this time he had been sitting in Stacy's apartment, looking forward to a whole day, thirty-six hours, of eating good food and listening to music and Stacy talking to him as if he wasn't medical equipment, as if he were a real person. There was a curling, horrified pain inside him: he had shoved violently away any feeling about not seeing Stacy again, but the realization he'd never see that apartment again - Stacy was moving away from New Jersey, to a job somewhere else, the apartment he remembered probably no longer _existed_ -

He had to stop feeling like this. He couldn't feel like this. He couldn't go on living like this.

Mrs Graham called him over when he stood up. House showed the empty bowl, used to this: he often left early, escaping the crowd of slaves who liked to shove and kick him if they had the chance. The supervisor had opened a paper sack and was dropping a large handful of slave chow into it from a big container. She added another handful.

"Here, big boy." She held it out to him.

House stared. Mrs Graham shoved the bag at him impatiently. She probably knew his name as well as he knew hers, after all these years, but she'd never called him by it. He'd never heard her refer to any of the slaves by name. He took the bag. His food for the next day. Slave chow. She had the day off tomorrow. Most of the basement staff did. He was supposed to go back to the Diagnostics department. Rider, his latest fellow, had gone home yesterday once they figured out the diagnosis for their latest patient. The best he could hope for was that there'd be a new patient. Someone in New Jersey desperately ill on Christmas Eve with something so obviously confusing and immediately lethal that whatever junior doctor was on duty would call on Diagnostics at PPTH at once to save a dying patient's life. That would be great.

"Get going, big boy," Mrs Graham said sharply.

House walked out. He stood in the basement hall, knowing he should go upstairs. He had his chow for tomorrow, he had the green mark on his hand exempting him from being locked up in a dorm for thirty-six hours. There'd be no music, no one to talk to, if he dared venture to the soft drinks machine he might get a coke. Diagnostics equipment wouldn't care about being left alone over Christmas.

The security guard on duty was watching him. The overseer's door was closed. Mrs Foster had retired last year. The new head overseer had evidently left promptly: and Doctor Cuddy had gone hours ago, to visit her family over Christmas. There was no one in the hospital who was authorized to cane him or have him whipped.

House walked towards the security station, opening up the paper sack. He threw a handful of slave chow at the guard, and laughed at the look of utter astonishment on the woman's face. When another man showed up, one of the guards Cuddy used to move him around the hospital, House threw another handful at his face, stepping back out of his reach, grinning widely.

They got him down, of course - he knew they would. But they'd learned to be careful with him. Wrists cuffed behind his back, his legs shackled together, he sat on his ass on the floor and grinned up at them.

"Is Mr Talbot still here?" someone was asking.

"No," another voice said: Chris Barrie, Talbot's deputy. He kicked House, not hard, in the butt. "Fucking troublemaker. Get him in the security station. Get someone out here to pick up all the chow he scattered."

"You might just as well let me go," House said clearly. "It's not like you're allowed to _do_ anything to me." The guards bodily picked him up. House heard Barrie telling a new guard, a very junior one, "Better not let the slaves see what happened - get a cleaning kit" and laughed. The slaves would know. They'd know a guard had to do a sanitation slave's work. They'd know Crazy Greg threw chow at the guards and wasn't punished. He'd get caned for it when Nic Gonzalez got back to work after the holidays, or ten lashes of the whip if they spoke to Doctor Cuddy first, but that was days away.

"All right," House said. He was put carefully on the floor of the security station. "Gently, you know how much I'm worth? Get this crap off me, I'm going upstairs."

Chris Barrie stood still, arms folded. He nodded to one of the guards. "Lock up the canteen and the dorms, just for now, and get all the guys in here. Who's good with a gag? Get one in his mouth, I don't want to hear from him any more."

A guard twisted his head back by his hair and tapped his jaw. His mouth fell open. Neatly, the guard shoved in the mouthpiece of the gag.

"Okay," Barrie said. "Get this piece of crap naked. Don't damage his clothes, fold 'em up neatly over there."

There were twelve or thirteen of the guards, not counting Barrie. They handled him efficiently: it was hard even to struggle. He hated being gagged. They fastened the cuffs and the shackles on him again. He'd never got up off the floor. Barrie lifted one booted foot and put it down on House's chest, not hard, just a reminder.

"Okay, guys, here's what's going to happen. This piece of crap is worth more than all our salaries put together. I'm not authorized even to cane him. I could talk to Doctor Cuddy about having him whipped, but that'd take days, and I don't think we want to wait, do we?"

There was a disturbing, murmuring growl of agreement.

"I'm changing the Christmas shifts. There's going to be four of us on duty, instead of three. Fourth guy's job is going to be to keep an eye on this piece of crap. He's going in the cage."

The growl of agreement got louder, enthusiastic. Barrie pressed down with his boot that bit harder.

"Now pay attention, because it's not just me that you'll be in trouble with if this piece of crap is damaged. Three people on the station, all the time. One watches the screen, one watches this piece of crap, two on standby, nobody takes more than a five minute break outside the station. The piece of crap's gag has to come out once an hour for at least five minutes, and either his cuffs or his shackles have to come off every three hours for at least ten minutes. Four people in the room whenever his cuffs or his shackles are off, no exceptions, and when you take him to the bathroom, two of you do it and don't take the restraints off. Yeah, this means wiping a shitty slave's ass, I don't give a fuck." Barrie lifted his boot from House's chest. "Roll him over."

Hands gripped, turned him. House was on his belly. He felt Barrie's foot prod at his buttocks.

"You want to have fun with him? I know. This piece of crap is a _valuable_ piece of crap. I'll be personally inspecting him before we send him back upstairs and if I see any bruises, any damage at all, anywhere, there's going to be trouble. He stays in the cage unless you've got a reason to take him out, and he stays gagged. Do as I've said and I'll stand by you. We don't take any crap from a fucking slave. Break my rules and you'll be lucky if the best that happens to you is you get canned. Now get him into the cage."

Hours later, or it might have been days, House was drifting, lost. He had lost track of time entirely. The gag in his mouth, the bars of the cage, were his only reality. He knew there was a reason this was happening, a reason he'd done this to himself. He could no longer remember what it was.

The sharp pain in his leg woke him up. He couldn't move very much, he couldn't press on the leg to relieve a musle cramp. This wasn't a cramp. It hurt worse than anything he'd ever felt before, even the tenth stroke of a judicial whipping. He screamed, muffled by the gag: when they took it out he screamed again and again, and couldn't shut up even when they cuffed the back of his head and shouted at him. It hurt too much. Something was wrong.

And they gagged him again and put him back in the cage.

**end**

_...and yeah, I don't do fluffy happy endings. Not even at Christmas. Happy holidays! _

_Now on to Season 3 of the Collarverse... that's enough Christmassy angst for me. For now, anyway. There's more to come in the Collarverse. If you liked it, leave a review... if you hated it but read to the end, leave a review anyway. And go read the other great stories at the Collarverse Community!  
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